Daniel arrives at the Sempere & Sons bookshop forty-five minutes late. His father scolds him for leaving the shop unattended and hurries out to visit a client, mentioning a letter left by the till. Daniel also notices Fermín is still absent, which worries him given Fermín’s last “disguise” plan to tail Nuria Monfort.

Daniel opens the letter and finds it is from Barcelona’s Military Government Recruitment Office: he is being called up to serve in two months. The news deepens Daniel’s anxiety about losing Bea and about his life being pushed out of his control.

Gustavo Barceló arrives and, after confirming Daniel’s father is gone, says he came specifically to speak to Daniel—and prefers the father not hear it. Barceló’s usual swagger is replaced by visible concern, and he asks after Fermín, then admits he regrets having encouraged Daniel’s investigation.

Barceló explains he met Manuel Gutiérrez Fonseca, a long-serving clerk at Barcelona’s municipal morgue, and paid him to check the archives. Don Manuel handled the case of “Julián Fortuny Carax,” brought in September 1936 with a book and a passport showing Carax entered Spain a month earlier; the wound appeared to be a point-blank shot above the heart, and the body seemed older than the police timeline claimed.

Crucially, Don Manuel says he phoned the publishing house the same day the body arrived and spoke to a young woman who sounded as if she already knew—contradicting Nuria Monfort’s story about a call three days later. Don Manuel also describes Carax’s father arriving distraught to identify the corpse, then abruptly leaving without confirming it. A third policeman—Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero—controlled the room, kept the passport, ordered a common-grave burial, and threatened Don Manuel into accepting the false identity, leaving his signature on the register. Barceló warns Daniel that this means they have been misreading the case, and that the real “lashings” from Fumero may be about to begin.